I used to edit Innovation Management. My book, "The Elastic Enterprise", co-authored with Nick Vitalari and described as a must read for companies that want to succeed in the new era of business - looks at how stellar companies have gone beyond innovation to a new form of wealth creation. I speak on new innovation paradigms.
I started my writing career in broadcasting and then got involved in the EU's attempt to create an ARPA-type unit, where I managed downstream satellite application pilots, at just the time commercial satellite services entered the market. I also wrote policy, pre the Web, on broadband applications, 3G (before it was invented), and Wired Cities.
I have written for many major outlets like the Wall St Journal, Times, HBR, and GigaOm, as well as producing TV for the BBC, Channel 4 and RTE. I am a research fellow at the Center For Digital Transformation at UC Irvine, where I am also an advisory board member, advisory board member at Crowdsourcing.org and Fellow of the Society for New Communications Research.
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Microsoft's Apple Killer Strategy - Options

It dawned on me slowly this week that I have become a Microsoft enthusiast. It hit me while I was watching Netflix via the X-Box. I never took to Windows Media products but without realizing it, I already migrated my TV habits to a Microsoft domain. Not long before that I had a great conversation with Bryan Robbins who uses the Kinect to do motion capture for his animation work. Bryan has hacked together his own motion capture system for $99.00, courtesy of Microsoft. That’s cool, though it might not be cool to think Microsoft is…. cool.

And then there is Microsoft’s new tablet, Surface. Surface is coming at just the right time. Too late for me, as I just bought an ASUS Zen but just in time for CIOs who are sure to start issuing tablets to the workforce soon. Now that they can use the world’s most familiar office productivity suite, it will accelerate adoption of enterprise tablets, a field Apple could have had all to itself.

Microsoft also looks well placed with Windows 8, in mobile as well as the tablet space (and has intelligently created options away from Nokia). And there’s the Yammer acquisition. You have to question the price but not the intent. Every other big player in enterprise social networks (ESNs) has a bloated Intranet-type platform, almost guaranteed to give employees dashboard fatigue. Yammer has built its reputation and business on being a communications tool for the connected age, a quite different approach to the ESN. Microsoft has the bloated version, Sharepoint, at the heart of 80% of all enterprises. Yammer looks to me like a medium-sized business application that is also a Sharepoint app. But its lightness will broaden Microsoft’s range in the new complex enterprise, and no doubt help Microsoft’s CRM offer. What chance Microsoft chasing Salesforce.com into the social enterprise?

Right now I can’t see me making use of an Apple TV or TV related product. I use X-Box. Google TV is not even on my horizon. When it came to making a decision about a tablet I would have jumped at Surface, rejected the iPad because I need to type, and took the ASUS ultra only because nothing on the market at the time served my needs. These are two areas where I would not normally have opted for a Microsoft-based product. Clearly as a consumer I am gravitating towards Redmond.

But on a strategic level these developments show how Microsoft is adopting a new approach to its business. Its current strategy is being interpreted as a re-run of Apple’s tight software, hardware integration. But I think the similarity lies in the strategic options portfolio. The strategic options approach is very different from the past when Microsoft owned the downstream Wintel franchise.

The strategic options portfolio is new. It means innovating simultaneously across a broad range of possible futures in markets where a company’s oligopoly power is much reduced. Until this year, in fact until the past few weeks Microsoft struck me as a company stuck in oligopoly management techniques. But now it all looks different. It has multiple options, across multiple market segments and it looks capable of developing a very strong adjacency portfolio too. Microsoft is beginning to look like a very modern type of company.

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I’m glad you like your MSFT products. The rest of us who like things that actually work out of the box – and continue to work – will still be spending our money elsewhere.

This statement is a great one: “Microsoft also looks well placed with Windows 8, in mobile as well as the tablet space (and has intelligently created options away from Nokia).”

Is that well placed in the same way they were well placed with earlier versions of Windows Mobile X solutions? You know, the ones for which we all spent lots of time & money developing products that never sold? The ones that have a commanding 1% of the market now?

Honestly, I think Apple needs competition. So does Google. It’s good for all of us. But I don’t see anything good coming from MSFT.

In the same way that he is dismissive, I do not particularly see this as a ‘call-out.’

Anyway, I agree that Microsoft is coming up, but there is a single line in this article that greatly hurts your reliability as an unbiased reviewer:

“rejected the iPad because I need to type…”

Really? If you made any attempt at using/reviewing an iPad and discovered that you cannot type, you should have immediately discovered that you can use most bluetooth capable keyboards to type beautifully on it. There are many viable criticisms of the iPad, this is not one of them.

“Microsoft also looks well placed with Windows 8…”

As long as we are merely discussing tablets and mobile devices, I can agree with that. It seems to be a very good mobile OS, though the reliability of it is yet to be seen (other than a failed stage demo that has now become a viral video of failure).

The problem that I have with Windows 8 occurs when the fact arises that Microsoft is not pushing it purely as a mobile solution but as a full OS solution, at which point Windows 8 fails miserably. Usability continues to increase in both of Apple’s OS’s (mobile and PC), while Windows 8 takes a major step back, pushing an interface that just isn’t a functional option for most computers in place today. It’s clunky, it’s overly simplistic, and is significantly less intuitive that it’s Windows 7 predecessor.

The point of all that to say that I would very cautious about saying that Microsoft is well placed with a product like Windows 8 without proper qualifications to the entirety of the product that is being marketed.

Now, with all of that out of the way, yes, Microsoft is making some great innovations and headway in areas that will unquestionably bring great products into the market and drive impressive competition across the board. Are they changing as a company, possibly. Is it the massive upheaval that this article seems to think, probably not. MSFT is the slow moving tortoise of the technology industry, it doesn’t move quickly but it will get there, and bring with it a ton of momentum.

You do understand that this is still a company that commands 95% of enterprise business right? Also Apple is only where they are because they finally decided to play nice with MS see WWDC 1997. Not even to mention that the worlds email runs on a MS protocol, ever heard of Active Exchange Sync. If you haven’t, then you will be surprise to know all of Apples cloud services runs off of AES, yes even Icloud it actually runs off of MS Azure which in it self is tied to AES. News flash MS is going no where and thinking they will just shows how little you do know of the tech industry.

I usually call out people who criticize me – it seems like the right editorial approach. You seem to be agreeing with much of what I’ve said and want to nitpick one sentence – yes, you can use a bluetooth connection to a keyboard but I write for a living and need to work with Word, often on long documents. If the iPad could do that as easily as an ultra, we should make the resellers aware of it because they advised me it was not suitable.

I do appreciate the change of focus from the Apple fascination to the other companies that help drive the innovation for which Apple is so acclaimed. Other companies do great things too, not just the men in white (or blue, or turtlenecks, or whatever their wardrobe happens to be today). Keep up the diverse writing.

My apologies, I think I miss understood the purpose of Forbes’ call-out system.

I do not particularly blame you for the iPad confusion, the reseller’s (read: Apple store floor employees) lack of knowledge of their own products is sometimes baffling. I am not attempting to nit-pick there, merely pointing something that stood out to me as peculiar, and dismissive (only mild emphasis added).

The larger point of my comment dealt with what should have been more hesitancy in the interpretation of MSFT’s actions. They still see themselves as a software giant, and their pushing of integration is great, but their focus is still on their OS, which still has a large amount of unaddressed issues.

I hope my critiques of your article (which was well written, hence the questions about minutia) come as honest points of discussion, not trivial attacks.